Blinken’s visit was agreed by US President Joe Biden and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping back in 2022. The trip was delayed in February due to political tumult brought on by the discovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew across America and was finally shot down.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Beijing on Sunday morning for what American media dubbed a “high-stakes visit meant to steer relations between the United States and China back on course after months of inflamed tensions between the two nations.” He is the first US top diplomat to visit the Asian nation in five years, and the first Biden administration official to do so.
Blinken has already met Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang as he plans to sit down with Wang Yi, director of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Foreign Affairs Commission Office and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, the top US diplomat said that in his meetings with senior Chinese officials, he intends to raise the US’ “very real concerns on a range of issues,” including the fentanyl crisis, Taiwan, the conflict in Ukraine, and China’s detention of American citizens.
On the fentanyl crisis, an unnamed senior State Department official was quoted by the media as saying that Blinken’s specific focus will be on stemming the flow of precursor chemicals from China to labs in South America, where fentanyl is produced.
The remarks were preceded by the US secretary of state telling reporters that during his visit to China, he plans “to explore the potential for cooperation on transnational challenges – global economic stability, illicit synthetic drugs, climate, global health – where our [the two] countries’ interests intersect and the rest of the world expects us to cooperate.”
He stressed the importance of the US and China establishing and maintaining better lines of communication. According to him, the US wants to make sure “that the competition we have with China doesn’t veer into conflict” due to avoidable misunderstandings.
“What we’re working to do on this trip is to really carry forward what President Biden and President Xi agreed to in Bali at the end of last year, which was to establish sustained, regular lines of communication at senior levels across our governments precisely so that we can make sure that we are communicating as clearly as possible to avoid, as best possible, misunderstandings and miscommunications,” Blinked underlined.
He was referring to the Biden-Xi sit-down in late 2022, when the two president agreed on Blinken’s visit to China in 2023, which was postponed in February after the shoot-down of what Washington called a Chinese surveillance balloon in US airspace.
Xi, for his part, hinted during his meeting with Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates on Friday that Beijing is ready to reduce bilateral tensions.
“I believe that the foundation of Sino-US relations lies in the people,” Xi said to Gates, adding, “Under the current world situation, we can carry out various activities that benefit our two countries, the people of our countries, and the entire human race.”
At the same time, officials from both governments reportedly signaled low expectations for the Blinken visit, with a senior State Department official telling reporters earlier this week that he does not expect “a long list of deliverables.”
They were echoed by Daniel Kritenbrink, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, who said that both the US and China came “to the shared conclusion that now is the right time to engage at this level,” but that “we’re not going to Beijing with the intent of having some sort of breakthrough or transformation in the way that we deal with one another.”
Blinken’s visit comes amid a major cooling in relations between the economic superpowers, which American Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns described as the “lowest moment” since then-US President Richard Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 to establish ties.
